We know the scene: the room, variously furnished, almost always a lectern, a book; always the tall lily.

Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings, the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,whom she acknowledges, a guest.

But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentionscourage. The engendering Spiritdid not enter her without consent.

God waited.

She was free to accept or to refuse, choice integral to humanness.

____________________

Aren’t there annunciations of one sort or another in most lives?

Some unwillingly undertake great destinies, enact them in sullen pride, uncomprehending. More often those moments when roads of light and storm open from darkness in a man or woman, are turned away from in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair and with relief.Ordinary lives continue. God does not smite them.But the gates close, the pathway vanishes. ____________________

She had been a child who played, ate, slept like any other child–but unlike others,wept only for pity, laughed in joy not triumph.Compassion and intelligence fused in her, indivisible.

Called to a destiny more momentous than any in all of Time, she did not quail,only asked a simple, ‘How can this be?’ and gravely, courteously, took to heart the angel’s reply, the astounding ministry she was offered:

to bear in her womb Infinite weight and lightness; to carry in hidden, finite inwardness, nine months of Eternity; to contain in slender vase of being, the sum of power–in narrow flesh, the sum of light.

Then bring to birth, push out into air, a Man-child needing, like any other, milk and love– but who was God.

This was the moment no one speaks of, when she could still refuse.

A breath unbreathed, Spirit, suspended, waiting. ____________________

She did not cry, ‘I cannot. I am not worthy,’ Nor, ‘I have not the strength.’ She did not submit with gritted teeth, raging, coerced. Bravest of all humans, consent illumined her. The room filled with its light, the lily glowed in it, and the iridescent wings. Consent, courage unparalleled, opened her utterly.

"The point isn’t that the song isn’t about human love; it is that the raw longing it expresses---the fear, for instance, that I may not be able to love and be loved—is exactly what faith is about."

What is popular music doing in our Sunday morning worship service? I’m thinking of a couple of recent examples: Lynn singing Aimee Mann’s “Save Me” a few months back or Sean singing Marc Cohen’s “The Things We’ve Handed Down” on Father’s Day. What does it mean to have recording artist level renditions of pieces like this rubbing shoulders with hymns, choir, scripture readings, and prayers?

To me it’s as simple as this. We believe and say that faith changes our lives and meets us closest to home, with the things that matter the most. We come to worship and plop ourselves down and take inventory: this is the me that’s here today, feeling tired or burned out in this way, or excited and thankful in that way, or upset in a some nameless way. This is where I need God to meet me. Popular music, at its best, has a way of putting a finger on exactly some such conditions. It blurts out or embodies some elemental moment in life. Its power is to represent that experience so we freshly recognize it in ourselves or are stunned to see it revealed so nakedly in another. We lose track that the faith whose expression has been encased in the form of the church’s greatest hits, its oldies, is directly related to those moments, not some special “made for church” problems.Talk about being saved may have walled itself off in a narrow precinct policed by ideas of judgment and afterlife. But Aimee Mann takes us straight out of that ghetto:

You look like... a perfect fit,For a girl in need... of a tourniquet.But can you save me?Come on and save me...If you could save me,From the ranks of the freaks,Who suspect they could never love anyone. 'Cause I can tell... you know what it's like.A long farewell... of the hunger strike.But can you save me?Come on and save me...If you could save me,From the ranks of the freaks,Who suspect they could never love anyone.

We can get caught up and embarrassed with the thought “This song is about romance, or sex and the only way it is slipping into church is that we are closing our eyes (and plugging our ears) to the obvious and talking loudly and nervously about metaphors." The point isn’t that the song isn’t about human love; it is that the raw longing it expresses---the fear, for instance, that I may not be able to love and be loved—is exactly what faith is about. On the most encompassing level we can know. It may not only be about what Aimee Mann is singing about. But it’s not different from what she’s singing about. Frederick Buechner said vocation is about finding where our deepest gladness meets the world’s deepest need. We Jesus trailers think faith is about where God’s best news meets our most honest selves. Music like this helps us bring our most honest selves to that appointment. A piece of music like this lays it out there: “this is the way it is with me.” At least sometimes. Like any prayer or sermon, it might not be dramatically true for everyone on that day and time. But it is an example of how we honestly are. And it poses the good question: what does the rest of what we are doing and saying here have to do with that? Oh, and why not just play the Aimee Mann CD on the sound system during church? I wouldn’t rule it out—and most churches don’t have any good alternative. But that’s the consumer mode that is popular music’s normal setting (and ours). It’s a special gift to have Sean and Lynn, who can share it on the same musical level but with a heart for the connection we’ve just described, as an act of worship and community. Is popular music infecting our worship? I see it the opposite way around. I can’t hear Aimee Mann’s song ever again without thinking she’s in church. I think she's singing our song.

S. Mark Heim is the Chairman of the FBC Council and Samuel Abbot Professor of Christian Theology and Andover-Newton Theological School. He is author of Salvations: Truth and Difference in Religion, The Depth of the Riches: A Trinitarian Theology of Religious Ends and, most recently, Saved From Sacrifice: A Theology of the Cross(Eerdmans, 2006).

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